For real, I just had a transmission eat all my money. A transmission! Thats what we’re dealing with and they’re wondering why we aren’t scrambling to pay tens of thousands. We simply do not have it. Also my landlord increased my rent at the same time. This place works for no one but the already rich.
The world economic forum has less actual power than the city counsel of buffalo New York. They aren’t the Illuminati they’re a bunch of jackasses trying to make an economic system that eats itself whenever it’s put in a position where it can sustainable without saying no to eating itself.
There is no lack of understanding here. But thats not the goal. There is no unified goal. We live in the era of a thousand fiefdoms, all allowed to own an exchange and partially own each other’s serfs. It is the endless gnawing masses. The sweet older couple down the street is just as guilty of the C Suite for profit motives, as their retirement depends on the stock market. A vicious, self-defeating cycle straight into the Garbage Wastes of Tomorrow.
I’d buy an EV if I could afford one. Shit, when that transmission went out it would have been a good time to consider. But not with the price tags on everything and my 2004 wages.
Well, you see, you don’t have to pay the entirety of the 47k right away. I have no idea why but they said I couldn’t make payments on the transmission when I asked in person.
While I agree that EVs are too expensive, it just sounds like you're making the argument that you can't buy any new car. Which is also fair but different.
But not if you take into account the leveled cost of ownership. But it’s an up front cost rather than spread out, so it’s more difficult. Plus the cost can be way lower if people okay with shorter range smaller vehicles.
With average us energy mix and fuel economy, a new EV will have emitted less co2 than continuing to use an old gas car after about a year. There are factors other than just co2 to the environment, (for example, cobalt mining is pretty bad) but EVs are much better on co2 at least.
Dealerships charging +30% “market adjustment” fees should be illegal. It happens to ICEs, too, but I’ve never seen stealerships price gouge anything like they do with shitty mid-trim EVs.
Every dealership in my area has their markup at least the amount of the tax credit. More than a few have exactly the tax credit. Tax credits are supposed to help steer the market, they’re not a handout to pointless middleman.
Markups are super annoying, but identify them quickly and call out the dealer ASAP when looking at new cars. Literally call them out, to their face, and say “No”. Don’t let them use pointless markups in price negotiations! What I do is find the average price of the car across multiple dealers, subtract all stupid markups, delete the cost of dealer added “upgrades” subtract a few thousand and work from there. There is not much wiggle room for brand new cars, so don’t expect to get a deal of the century. Used cars are a totally different beast, but you can basically ignore markups as well.
Provided that your local dealers aren’t affiliated in some way, play the long game and play them against each other in a mini-price war. Stupid markups will generally evaporate naturally in that case.
(LPT: Do not sign anything but the actual loan paperwork or contract to buy the car. This will piss off a sales person to no end, but they will get over it. I can go into details why, but I am already outside the scope of this thread.)
A short anecdote to emphasize the wiggle room on used cars:
I briefly worked at a car dealership. A guy traded an old Acura RSX, maybe about fifteen years old. We gave him $500 for it and sold it two days later for $8000.
And this is why a lot of us prefer Tesla’s approach. While there were still things I didn’t like about the process, it was much more straightforward and easy. No markups, no worry about getting ripped off, no having to “get up and walk away”, no dealing with stupid tricks like “I’ll go to bat with my manager for you”. I just bought the car … and Tesla has lowered prices this year, combinEd with state and federal rebates, the price isn’t bad
I needed to drive 5 hours to get one at a good price. And they were moving tones of that model though. The other places I went to also mentioned their EVs were moving very quickly, one I was looking at was bought within 2 days of listing. So this doesn’t at all match with my experience. Maybe they’re referring to the super expensive luxury EVs rather than lower price ones?
you can order a Ford Mustang Mach E from their website and have it shipped to a dealer and never really do anything at the dealers except get your new car
It’s a delicate ecosystem: the car salesmen need their cut to spend on drinking and gambling or else the bars and dog tracks will shut down causing more unemployment.
I don’t want amazon involved in anything, but I’ve bought a car off the internet before and had it delivered. I only had to to go anywhere to do the wire transfer at my bank.
Because dealers have lobbied to have the law mandate them.
I know "deregulation" is a bit of a dirty word, but some regulations are genuinely bad. In this case, it's literal textbook rent seeking, in the economics sense.
How about you and the manufacturers sell them cheaper, and now here me out. Maybe then, and I know this is a crazy idea. But could we make it so that the already rich multi million dollar owners earned less?
Nah, wouldn’t want that. I’m sure VW and the gang need the money.
It is not in a dealers best interest to sell vehicles that require less costly services for the life of the car which is a big ongoing revenue for many dealerships.
This is the exact reason everyone across the globe exclusively use horses for transportation. Replacing them with these horseless carriages would destroy the shoeing business, where would we put all of the feed?.. What is Biden thinking?!
Sales people do not have that long a perspective. The article does talk about 100-200% turnover every year, which is again horrible practices coming back to bite them, but the sales person is only interested in immediate commission and bonus
“On average, barely 5 per cent of a dealer’s profit comes from new car sales. The majority (about 50 per cent) comes from parts and service, while the remainder comes from finance and insurance (30 per cent) and the balance is from used cars (15 per cent).”
In the US it appears to be very similar.
“So where does the majority of a dealership’s profit come from? It’s not from car sales, at least not directly. It’s from the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership’s gross profits, according to NADA.”
Start selling cheaper ones. The day a sub $20,000 EV comes along that can do more than 150 miles on a charge you will all shut up and take my money. I don’t need fancy features, I just need something that can get me to work and back with a bit of wiggle room and never have to pay for gas again. 150 miles would be more than sufficient, but 200 would be PERFECT. Leaf and Bolt are close, can we get something a little cheaper, pretty please?
Buy used? I don’t understand the argument that they need to be cheaper as new, when you wouldn’t have bought new before but now you will for electric? I’ve had my bolt since COVID started and it’s been great. Don’t buy leaf tho
Can buy used for 13-17k depending, ~200mi interstate range
BEV/Hybrids have been around a while, there’s places you can buy individual cells when they die and it’s pretty easy to replace them. As time goes by, it should become no harder than going to the auto parts store like we do with regular ICEs. Unless they do shady stuff like making the batteries OEM only, like how Apple do with their batteries.
We don’t even know if the batteries on those things will worsen with time, like all other batteries do.
We absolutely do. Of course they degrade over time. But they last much monger than expected. Today they all come with 100,000mile 8-10year warranties.
You cant replace the battery on a EW, it’s cheaper to buy a new car.
Of course you can! They’re designed to be replaced. Most of them can be swapped out in about an hour at an equipped shop. And the cost (outside of warrantee) is typically about 20-30% the cost of the car. So it’s absolutely cheaper to replace the battery than buy new.
These stories piss me off, because I tried from January to May to buy a Chevy Bolt from a dozen plus dealers and all I found was markups, falsely advertising customer pre-ordered vehicles as available for sale, and even 3 year old models with 5000 miles being advertised as “new.”
I finally gave up and bought a used car from an independent honest dealer. All this talk of EV’s not being able to sell is just the dealer tactics coming back to haunt them and I say fuck them
Add comment